Houkago Cinderella 2 (放課後シンデレラ 2) Review

Hooksoft’s earlier Houkago Cinderella (After School Cinderella) was a huge hit. I thought it was a decent game, but I never expected it to be popular enough to get an official sequel… so here’s Houkago Cinderella 2.

The original was a pure school romance setup: the protagonist picks different after-school routes, runs into different heroines, and each one spins out into a different love story. The only real gameplay hook was the “fortune telling”: every day after school you can hit up two bros for a reading, they hint at where each heroine might show up, and you pick your route based on that to clear each girl’s route.

Of course, if you can’t make sense of the fortunes, you can just look up a guide.

My one complaint about the previous game was the route selection screen. It was lazy as hell — you’re just clicking on some giant “scene images,” and a route list generates on the left side. Super bare-bones.

This game improves the after-school route system. The core is the same, but now you can actually see the route you’re planning. It tells you the start and end points clearly, so it feels more like commanding the map.

The fortune-telling is still in, this time with a more professional female classmate fortune teller. Once a heroine’s affection hits a certain level, the 1-on-1 conversation scenes are back too. Yeah, it’s fake as hell, but it still gives lonely otaku that virtual illusion of “I’m having an intimate talk with a girl.”

The romance is still classic Hook: meet, fall in love, discover some obstacle in the heroine’s personal life, help her get past it, roll credits. But the details are weaker than the original. The girls in the first game felt more real — they had independent personalities and kept their distance until the relationship was actually confirmed. This game’s heroines throw that distance out the window; they’re at max affection from the start, the usual template. Maybe the virgin fat otaku prefer that kind of instant-attraction plot. Personally I’d rather watch a girl go from indifferent to falling for you.

All in all, Houkago Cinderella 2 is a perfectly standard sequel. It inherits the original’s framework, systems, and setting, adds new romanceable heroines, patches up some of the original’s weak spots, and tweaks the story to cater more to entry-level otaku. In that sense it’s a successful release, I guess. The one thing that never changes is that dogshit 720p resolution.

On the other hand, it got me thinking. When a visual novel gets a sequel that’s just the previous game with a new skin slapped on and replayed, is that really a sincere sequel? Or what would even count as a proper VN sequel?

At minimum, bump the resolution to 1080p.

I’ve been grumbling about Hook and SMEE for a few years now — they keep “refurbishing” and reheating the same old stuff in every possible sense. That’s the industry norm these days, sure, and to put it bluntly, pretty much every VN in the last two years runs on the same template. While I was writing this, I happened to see Jionglian complaining that all my eroge reviews read the same.

Thought about it. Yeah, probably true.

I used to be able to do something fun with these eroge write-ups. Lately I can’t tell if I’ve got electronic ED or if eroge plots have just gotten that formulaic — so many games carry the shadow of some older title from the same company, and I end up flipping the same tired observations back and forth. I’ve written a lot of commercial pieces about HOOK and SMEE in the past two years, and I feel it deeply.

These games are all simple, straightforward romance. Nothing special in the plot, the same unchanging garbage 720p resolution, the same unchanging busted engine, the same unchanging garbage marketing… templated jokes, templated music, templated heroine designs. All that changes is the heroine’s name, hair color, outfit, and CV. After enough of it you get sick of it, and yet I can’t help looking anyway, hoping to find something special. Every time, disappointment.

But the weird thing is, I keep seeing other otaku absolutely hyped for these reskinned eroge. I find them boring — the same product in a different wrapper — but there’s always some fat otaku clutching a black shark plushie, staying excited.

Why? Have I gone impotent?

Or is my memory just too good?

Seeing how many reskinned anime gacha games make bank, I think I get it.